WSM-FM
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| City | Nashville, Tennessee |
|---|---|
| Broadcast area | Nashville, Tennessee |
| Branding | 95-5 Nash Icon |
| Slogan | "The music that made country great...and the best of today." |
| Frequency | 95.5 MHz |
| First air date | November 1, 1962 |
| Format | Country |
| ERP | 100,000 watts |
| HAAT | 374.8 meters (1,230 ft) |
| Class | C |
| Facility ID | 74065 |
| Callsign meaning |
We Shield Millions (slogan of former owner, National Life & Accident Insurance Company) |
| Former callsigns | WLWM-FM (1962-1968) |
| Owner |
Cumulus Broadcasting (Cumulus Licensing LLC) |
| Sister stations | WKDF, WGFX, WQQK, WWTN |
| Webcast | Listen Live |
| Website | 955NASHICON.com |
WSM-FM is an FM radio station in Nashville, Tennessee. The station broadcasts at 95.5 MHz and broadcasts a country music radio format, with an emphasis upon recordings released since the 1990s.
From 1968 to 2008, WSM-FM was the sister of the legendary clear-channel WSM. The station is now owned by Cumulus Media and no longer has any organizational relation to the AM. A transmitter site is co-located with the station's former television partner WSMV in West Nashville, and its studios are located in Nashville's Music Row district.
The National Life and Accident Insurance Company, owners of WSM, became the first commercial broadcaster in the U.S. to receive an FM license from the Federal Communications Commission in 1941. Originally known as W47NV, the station operated for about 10 years, until NL&AI realized that few area households had FM radio receivers and that its commercial potential was lacking, unlike the company's television station, WSM-TV (now WSMV). NL&AI shut down WSM-FM in 1951 and returned the license to the FCC.
The present-day FM began broadcasting on November 1, 1962 as WLWM-FM, owned by C. Webber Parrish (d/b/a Barlane Broadcasting Corporation), a local Nashville businessman. National Life & Accident Insurance purchased the 95.5 MHz frequency from Parrish in 1968, and after a short period of simulcasting the AM, programmed an easy listening format (the format WLWM used) on it from 1969 until early 1976.
Afterward, NL&AI allowed a change (despite some management misgivings) to a soft-rock playlist that was very broad by today's standards; during those years, the station adopted the branding "SM95".
In demographics, the station went after an audience of people in their twenties and thirties who, obviously enough, wanted something more musically interesting than easy listening but disliked the harder and louder rock that was becoming popular among teenagers then. SM95 was one of the few outlets in the nation for up-and-coming singer-songwriters to get airplay without having a smash record elsewhere; some of the artists were in fact Nashville-based, reflecting the growth in non-country artists recording there. One might consider the moderately eclectic format a forerunner of the "adult alternative" playlists that achieved some success years later, in the 1990s and early 2000s.
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Wikipedia